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Fig.1. First Two Folios of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (South Lancashire, c.1400, 90v-91r); British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x. (art. 3); web; 12 June 2016.

1 Liberties that Editors and Translators Take: Unframing and Reframing the Border of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Wajih AYED LERIC, Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines, Université de Sousse

Abstract: In this work, I discuss the management of the initial iconic peritext of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in a paper edition, a , and a digital facsimile. Writing from the perspective of cognitive , I argue that the miniature is not a disposable illustration but a framing border, the (non) reproduction of which in each modern rendition of the text has different consequences on the mental processes involved in reading the poem. Keywords: Editorial liberties – iconic peritext – spatial status – cognitive frame / framing – framing border

[O]ne would wish for an editing and reproduction culture in which framings, including original framings, are not as frequently omitted as in many present editions of literary texts…. — Werner Wolf, “” 33

Introduction

Of the extant of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,1 folio 90v2 in British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x. (art.3) is the most widely recognised illustration of the poem and, paradoxically, the least frequently reproduced in modern renditions of the text. Editors and translators of the poem have indeed taken liberties with the text and its peritextual elements which have significant repercussions on the cognitive processes involved in reading. Intrigued by the ghastly illumination at the beginning of the poem, I address the implications of its management in the critical edition by J.R.R. Tolkien and E.V. Gordon, in the classic translation by Marie Borroff, and in the ongoing hypertextual edition directed by Murray McGillivray. My theoretical approach is based on concepts from Gérard Genette’s theory of paratextuality and Werner Wolf’s frame-theoretical cognitive narratology. After mapping and analysing the status of the peritextual material in the manuscript and in the three modern renditions just mentioned, I specifically focus on the miniature on f.90v as a framing

1 Henceforth, SGGK. 2 The manuscript has two foliation sequences, the first is in ink (leaves 37-126 [SGGK 90v- 126v]) and the second is in pencil (41-130 [SGGK 94v-130v]). The former is used here.

2 border presenting the poem, assisting its textual reception, and keying its frames.

1. Editing the of SGGK: A Synchronic Edge for a Diachronic Axe

At the beginning of his seminal Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, Genette defines the paratexts of a literary work as the verbal or iconic elements which extend it and present it to the reader, such as illustrations, titles, subtitles, dedications, forewords, epigraphs, prefaces, authorial or editorial notes, epilogues, postfaces, and afterwords; he insists that these liminal productions serve as thresholds, as zones of transition and transaction between the text and the off-text (1-15). Rather than disposable accessories whose presence and presentation in (modern) reproductions depend on the decisions of editors, translators, and publishers, these paratexts are part of the overall textual production programme, where all elements are mutually dependent. At the end of his , Genette succinctly summarises the relationship between a text and its paratext in an apt extended of organic interdependence. He memorably says,

if the text without its paratext is sometimes like an elephant without a mahout, a power disabled, the paratext without its text is a mahout without an elephant, a silly show. Consequently the discourse on the paratext must never forget that it bears on a discourse that bears on a discourse, and that the meaning of its object depends on the object of this meaning, which is yet another meaning. A threshold exists to be crossed. (Genette 410)

I could not agree more, but modern manipulations of SGGK have tended to tread lightly on this threshold, or simply to jump onto the text, thus denying readers the assisted access to the text permitted by its paratextual apparatus. If the relationship between text and paratext can be aptly rendered through the metaphor of the elephant and the mahout, the same relationship in the context of the manuscript can perhaps more appropriately expressed in terms of the knight and his horse, but the knight seldom rides his horse in modern paper editions and . In the manuscript, there he rides and alights.

1.1. Gawain in Colour: The Illuminated Peritext

Surviving in only one manuscript held by the British Library and shelfmarked Cotton Nero A.x. (art. 3),3 SGGK is preceded by three poems

3 For a detailed of the manuscript, see Israel Gollancz’s introduction to his classic facsimile (passim), the thorough by A.S.G. Edwards (197-219), and the more recent observations by McGillivray (34).

3 likewise ascribed to the Gawain-Poet,4 namely, Pearl, Cleanness, and Patience. The texts are ‘illustrated’ by twelve full-page miniatures: four before Pearl, two preceding Cleanness, two before Patience, one at the beginning of SGGK (which is the focus of this work), and three at its end. The spatial repartition of the text and its peritextual elements5 may be more clearly rendered in the following table:

Initial Iconic Peritext Poem Final iconic peritext Text 4 miniatures Pearl –– Foliation 37r-38v 39r-55v Text 2 miniatures Cleanness –– Cotton Foliation 56r-56v 57r-82r Nero A.x. Text 2 miniatures Patience –– (art. 3) Foliation 82r-82v 83r-90r Text 1 miniature SGGK 3 miniatures Foliation 90v 91r-124v 125r-126r Fig. 2. Spatial Repartition of Text and Paratext in Cotton Nero A.x. (art. 3)6

One of the major issues in codicological debates about the manuscript is whether the iconic peritexts are original or subsequent. Corroborating an early critical view by Gollancz (9), Edwards argues for an “evident hiatus between copying and decoration” (218). Drawing on recent findings about Cotton Nero A.x. (art.3), as well as on her own ongoing research based on multi-spectral imaging of the miniatures in the manuscript, Maidie Hilmo contends that, while the recently evidenced use of iron gall ink for the poem and the underdrawings7 of the miniatures (which is very rare in medieval British manuscripts) does not demonstrate that the scribe and the artist were the same person, it “unquestionably places [them] more closely together in terms of opportunity, resources, and time frame” (1-2). As she cleverly suggests, the painter was probably different from the original artist; she further surmises that

4 The anonymous author is generally referred to as either the Pearl-Poet or the Gawain-Poet. The latter is used in this paper. 5 That is, the liminal elements spatially located inside the literary work; epitextual elements are originally located outside it (Genette 4-5). 6 I hasten to note that the spatial location of the miniatures does not mirror the progress and of the verbal . For example, of the three iconic peritexts at the end of SGGK, only the last, depicting Gawain’s return to Arthur’s court is immediately related to the last two stanzas. 7 In codicology, underdrawing refers to the “[p]reliminary drawing that lies under the final painted or inked image” in a manuscript (“Underdrawing”).

4 a “novice or assistant did the painting, or that someone at a later stage intervened to add colour” (2). The plans for the miniatures were thus credibly part of the overall plan for the manuscript. The illumination on f.90v depicts two scenes. The small upper frame shows a royal couple and a warrior, perhaps sir Aggravain, in red, brandishing a sword on their left; on their right is another armed retainer shouldering a massive axe and raising his left hand while facing the king. Viewers can deduce that this warrior has obtained the axe from the king, offering to do in his stead what they understand later, after viewing the large lower frame. The axe-man has decapitated the green knight whose severed head, still dripping blood, has a defiant look darted at the executioner, whose gaze is proudly fixed on the beholder. The beheading scene is ellipted in the manuscript, but the whole miniature is generally eclipsed in modern editions and translations.8 Acting as a “visual preface” (Hilmo 1) to the poem, the miniature can be seen as a metaphor for the relationship between the text and its fringe in modern manipulations of SGGK. Writing about the poems in Cotton Nero A.x. (art. 3), Edwards points out that readers access these “as edited texts, that are the outcome of a large number of editorial decisions that affect general and particular aspects of the presentation of these works” (200, emphasis added), such as punctuation, capitalisation, lineation, transcription, and versification. If the authorial (or even allographic) paratext in Genette’s theory has the function of presenting the text to the reader, editorial decisions regarding both the text and its paratext can have a significant impact on the presentation, hence the interpretation, of the work. They should therefore not be taken lightly. As Erik Kelemen rightly observes, “for an interpretation of a work to be valid, the text on which the interpretation is based has to be an accurate representation of that work” (8, emphasis added). This has generally not been the case for the poem under study. In the following section, I focus on three editorial renditions of the initial iconic peritext of SGGK in two different media.

1.2. Gawain in Print: The Paper Peritext

Elaine Treharne captures an essential between modern and medieval texts when she asserts that the former generally retain a “relatively fixed [para-] textual identity” whereas the latter “are effectively arbitrated by the editor” (9). Unauthorised though they are, modern editors often replace medieval authors, artists, and scribes, supplanting or supplementing original textual emendations or paratextual apparatuses with their own. The manuscript of SGGK has met such a treatment in most paper

8 I do not address the many print or digital adaptations and retellings of the poem because these amount to rewritings of the text.

5 editions of the text, whether on its own, or together with the other poems by the Gawain-Poet. As Edwards pertinently observes, a “very striking aspect of the manuscript not always fully reflected in modern [paper] editions is the presence of illustrations” (202, emphasis added). These have generally been freely managed by editors and often considered disposable, perhaps on account of their supposedly humble artistic quality.9 Modern renditions of the medieval text sometimes mediate it in creative ways which may not always be judicious. While a quantitative study of all modern print editions and translations can be suitable for a longer research work, a qualitative analysis of Tolkien and Gordon’s edition and Borroff’s translation of the text can be equally rewarding in terms of findings. As Kenna Olsen candidly notes, every edition “is a necessary and useful manipulation, a balance of manoeuvres, sometimes silent yet sometimes overt, between author and edition over what a text says and what was intended” (“Realising (Re)Vision, Manipulating Manoeuvres”). Seeking to lie bare some of these manipulations of SGGK in its translations from parchment to paper, fig. 3 compares the status of the paratextual apparatus of the manuscript with its counterparts in the critical edition, the translation, and the digital facsimile. Its length may be excused by the need to extensively map the differences in editorial practices. A preliminary scrutiny of the paratextual apparatuses of the critical edition and the translation shows that the illumination on f.90v was not reproduced in either. The miniature in question is admittedly saturated with violence. The ominous brandishing of sharp edges in the upper frame underscores the fright of the royal consort as she clings to her husband, but the horror of the ellipted decapitation scene becomes terror as the Green Knight unnaturally holds his severed head high in defiance of Gawain. It is perhaps to screen this gory show that the initial iconic peritext is omitted from the paper edition and translation, for the modern manipulators of the poem were perhaps reluctant to offend the ethical sensibilities of a readership with a heightened sense of respect for life. Besides, potential readers would not normally be acquainted with the medieval folktale of the beheading game; such an overflow of violence on the cover page may seem offending and therefore be an acquisition deterrent. Another possible explanation is that publishers are

9 The illuminations have generally been received negatively in the early history of the manuscript’s editorship. Writing in 1923, Gollancz dismissed these as “of crude workmanship” (9). R.S. and LH Loomis even alleged in 1938 that “[t]he nadir of English illustrative art is found in the caricatures which accompany the unique MS of Gawain and the Green Knight” (qtd. in Edwards 218). For recent and generally more clement views, see Hilmo “The Power of Images in the Auchinleck, Vernon, Pearl, and Two Piers Plowman Manuscripts,” Opening Up Middle English Manuscripts: Literary and Visual Approaches, eds. Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Maidie Hilmo, and Linda Olson (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2012), 179-89; and for useful references to previous approaches, see Hilmo (1 n.2).

6 perhaps simply forestalling official censorship of the gory scene, after all. Perhaps also, the art of f.90v may appear too crude to modern viewers who might thus infer that the book on display has little or no literary quality. The widely circulating negative stereotypes about the alleged inferior quality of medieval art would certainly not help them have a better opinion. The simplest and most plausible explanation is that publishers (of especially cheap paper editions) are seeking to save on printing costs. Colour is expensive, but the unlicensed liberty of seeking a cost-effective rearrangement, excision, or replacement is free. Fortunately, colour is free on the ubiquitous screens of contemporary multi-media devices. In the bits, Gawain is whole again.

1.3. Gawain in Bits: The Digital Peritext

A digital facsimile of the manuscript is now freely accessible online on the website of the University of Calgary or through the dedicated Cotton Nero A.x. Project. Led by Professor McGillivray, the team of technicians and scholar working on the project

is producing an electronic edition that in its final, optical-disk (i.e., CD-ROM or DVD-Rom) form will surround new high-resolution digital photographs of the manuscript with hypertextually linked documents, including a full transcription of the manuscript, critical editions of the four poems, reading texts based on the critical editions, textual and explanatory notes, an on-line bibliography, and sources and analogues.” (McGillivray 39)

Offering a facsimile of the text-paratext apparatus, the hypertext is identical to the manuscript in terms of its foliation and the contents of its physical objects, which means that the viewer/reader can go through the original order of stanzas and miniatures. As suggested by fig. 3, the digital edition presents mainly substantial differences from the manuscript. These follow from the electronic medium of the hypertextual edition and the user-friendly interfaces allowed by modern software. The selection of a layout or of presentation (thumbnail or grid view) depends on the preferences and actions of users, who can click on a high-definition photo of a folio, then access more options enhancing the interactive experience. They therefore have the benefit of an editorial approach supplying a computer-assisted “text-file accompaniment to [the] digital facsimile of the manuscript” extending and complementing the high-resolution images by recording the of physical objects and the texts they contain, and by acting as detailed guides to these (McGillivray 43). By accessing the description of the digitised folio and, possibly, the complementary files accompanying the digital text, the user (especially if newly introduced to the Gawain-Poet) can be brought closer to the framings and frames encoded in the

7 original text. Of course, these are constantly augmented by recent research, which can update some of the previous readings of the text. It should also be noted that the constituents of the hypertextual edition are literally framed by the browser and website interfaces acting as metaframings, surrounding and augmenting the cognitive structures evoked by the manuscript. admitted to the edition through the portal of the University of Calgary, the user is immersed in a larger virtual context, with its own framings and frames, which provides a tertiary paratextual apparatus to SGGK. Upon access, the Library webpage features a partial photo of its main building, together with captions and links to other resources and services. This framing interface accompanies the user in all subsequent manipulations of the electronic edition, in a strange anachronism between the perfectly neat, modern trappings of the website objects and the original, humanly flawed images. The paratextual fringe of the manuscript has witnessed many excisions, modifications, and augmentations, and each configuration of the text taps the mind nexus differently. Based on Genette’s discussion of the different statuses of the paratext in the literary text, fig. 3 compares the editorial management of the original peritextual apparatus of SGGK in the manuscript and three modern renditions. In their facsimiles, translations, and diplomatic or critical editions, modern manipulators of past archives have dealt differently with the initial iconic peritext of the text, the part which has suffered the most from the idiosyncrasies of editorial practices. From printing f.90v in the actual order of the manuscript (but in many shades of grey) to replacing it by another liminal element from the manuscript—or even from medieval or postmedieval texts sometimes far removed from the contexts of the poem,10 modern editorial management has extensively affected the paratextual apparatus, hence the cognitive configuration, of the text.

10 Tolkien’s 1975 translation of SGGK strips the text from its authorised framing border and opts for a cover page depicting Bertilak about to bring down his axe in a powerful blow (which actually severs the iconic peritext, not Gawain’s head). Simon Armitage’s 2008 translation features on its first cover a detail from a photo of a medieval plate armour suit; instead of the axe, there are two small arrowheads in green. One would wonder how helpful these can be in evoking the frames of the original manuscript. The 2009 edition of Burton Raffel’s translation is content with a detail from the drawing of a medieval young knight by the Victorian artist Aubrey Beardsley. M.S. Merwin’s 2004 translation oddly depicts an alien-like green face with scintillating eyes and a gaping mouth. While such an editorial largesse is not a rule (cf. the 2003 edition of Jessie Weston’s translation), it nevertheless remains the dominant practice.

8 Text Manuscript Edition Translation Hypertext Paratext Four illuminations Frontispiece, title page, Front cover, title page, High-resolution photos (folios 90v, 125r, 125v, preface, introduction table of contents, of the manuscript folios; Peritext Spatial and 126r); irrelevant (including a black-and- introduction, notes on through the browser and Status two-line lyrical note of white facsimile of the metrical form, short website interfaces, it also complaint on top of folios 91r and 125r), list of reading offers interactive links to folio 125r; nine select bibliography, suggestions, back an impressive peritextual decorated initials (lines note on editorial cover, and spine apparatus (under 1, 491, 619, 763, 1126, emendations, footnotes, construction to date) 1421, 1893, 1998, notes on meter, 2259) and postscript language, and (motto of the Order of grammar, glossary, the Garter11) and index of names Epitext Online discussions and comments, shares, tweets, captions, etc.12 Temporal Status Original Belated (first published Belated (first published Belated (online since (underdrawing) in 1925) in 1967) 2010) Subsequent (painting) (Probably) Anthumous Posthumous Posthumous Posthumous

Substantial Status Verbal and iconic (four Verbal and iconic Verbal and iconic Virtual (the actualisation coloured full-page (black-and-white of verbal and iconic

11 As Edwards observes, the motto of the Order of the Garter (HONY SOYT QUI MAL PENCE) inscribed at the end of the poem, establishes 1348, the date of the foundation of the order, as the earliest possible date for the transcription of the poem (198), but he observes that whether or not the motto was written by the same scribe as the poem is uncertain (198, n.3). 12 Such epitextual additions can be found in the “Medieval Manuscripts Blog” on the British Library website (for example, http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2014/02/gawain-revealed.html).

9 illustrations and nine photos of ff. 91r and (coloured front cover) peritexts depends on the initials decorated with 125r) viewers’ interactions floral motifs) with the hypertext) The poem “has been The verbal parts of the The verbal parts of the Digitised original content copied in darkish brown book are printed in book are printed in of iconic and verbal ink by a single scribe Times New Roman. Times New Roman. peritextual elements (the using a script derived latter are accompanied from textura rotunda, by an XML but incorporating transcription) anglicana features” (Olsen, “Introduction” 4-5). No biographical and The absence of The absence of The absence of historical data biographical data is biographical data is information on the mentioned, but the mentioned, but the author, scribe, artist, and editors try to identify translator provides a painter is mentioned and the region of short background to speculated about, thus production and the date the manuscript and its engrossing the epitextual of transcription. author. apparatus. Pragmatic Addresser Authorial and scribal Editorial Editorial Scribal and editorial (probably allographic) Status Addressee Public (except the Limited public Large public Restricted public (the lyrical note, which is (students and informed (accessible translation edition is accessible by private—hermetic, readers of the critical in Modern Standard all, but (so far) readable even) edition in Middle English) by the few with expertise English) in Middle English) Illocutionary Covertly informative Extensively Briefly informative Telegraphically Force about the , informative about the about the general informative about the and key poet and his time as backgrounds and the key factual elements of moments in the well as about the metrical forms of the the manuscript. The

10 narrative generic affiliations, poem digitised photos are sources and accompanied by of the poem hypertextual links offering further information The first illumination The book is given an The book is The digitised text and its features a knight taking almost-universally conventionally entitled paratextual apparatus are an axe from a king in accepted title and is and ascribed. The given a general title and the upper frame; in the ascribed to the cover page shows in the poem is ascribed to lower frame, it depicts a Gawain-Poet. These the background a the Gawain-Poet, but decapitated green decisions are editorial, modified illumination individual folios are knight holding his head being taken on behalf of a medieval castle in accompanied by high. Through this of the author. The light blue; the title and hypertextual links to the teasing iconic frontispiece no longer the name of the editorial descriptive and peritextual element shows the first, but translator are given in classificatory notes. acting as a cover page, rather features the white; separating them This edition undertakes the text is identified as second miniature. This horizontally is a yellow to provide a digital a chivalric romance manipulation displaces sword. The castle and facsimile of the text and involving martial the violence of the first the sword vaguely promises to faithfully adventure and magic. iconic peritext of suggest martial themes. reproduce on the screen SGGK and puts its original, barely emphasis on the legible folios of courtliness. Perlocutionary Thrifty with contextual By providing a user- By offering a verse By presenting a threshold Force clues and beginning friendly critical edition, translation, the edition to the text in Modern with a defamiliarised the book appears is reassuring and Standard English, this peritext, the text creates enlightening. inviting. edition appears awe and wonder, and enlightening, inviting, generates . and user-friendly. Fig. 3. Status of the Paratextual Apparatus in the Manuscript and Three Renditions of SGGK

11 Insightful as it is, this approach to text-liminality has some limitations because it is based on the Structuralist linguistic model of communication involving a sender, a receiver, and a message. What is perhaps insufficiently prospected in Genette’s work is the role of the mind in constructing the message and mediating the passage from the paratext to the text. Wolf’s contributions to cognitive narratology, which acknowledge the specificity of the literary text and the literary speech , present an approach to the analysis of plurimedial literary narrative where the role of frames is considered:

Text (concrete) Narrative (concrete) Frame (abstract) Paratext (concrete) Framing (concrete) Fig. 4. Paratextual vs. Frame-theoretical Models of Text-liminality

In the light of Wolf’s writings about frames, framings, and borders, I proceed to study the triangular relationship between the miniature on f.90v, the manuscript of SGGK, and the mind in the next part of the paper. My purpose is to evidence the downsides of some ‘creative’ modern editorial presentations and manipulations of the medieval text to the twenty-first century reader. Following Wolf, then, I argue that there is a need for a specifically literary model of frame analysis. This is especially true for a historically removed text like Cotton Nero A.x. (art. 3). C.S. Lewis has famously called the late medieval worldview a “discarded image.” Critical reservations aside, this conceptual world is even further removed from our digital age and its increasingly immaterial cultures. Strangers to medieval minds, we are nevertheless left with medieval artefacts and their thresholds, where important keys to the past lie rusting in half-forgetfulness.

2. Unframing/Reframing SGGK 2.1. Whetting the Keys

In his Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience, Erving Goffman develops an elaborate linguistic frame theory (40-82, and passim) which has since provoked many responses to some its main concepts,

12 namely, primary framework, key, keying, and rekeying. These debates attracted the interest of scholars from different disciplines and led to many, often barely overlapping, conceptions of frame.13 Faced with the unavailability of a frame theory which can lend itself convincingly to “the study of and other media as specific forms of signifying practices” (“Introduction” 12), Wolf proposes a functional working definition of the term as a cognitive guide which enables interpretation, regulates other concepts, and governs expectations from these (2-4). While he acknowledges that frames are fluid metaconcepts with provisional historical and cultural moorings which can subsequently be anchored elsewhere as subjects navigate through experiential worlds, Wolf concedes that frames are also received notions which inevitably tend to sediment into stereotypes orienting mind navigators to shared mental maps (4- 5). Because frames are abstract and cannot be accessed without suitable media and means, there is a need for framings, or

codings of abstract cognitive frames that exist or are formed within, or on the margins and in the immediate context of, the framed situation or phenomenon and—like the corresponding frames—have an interpretive, guiding and controlling function with reference to it.” (6).

This definition of framings has a general relevance and a scope which can be narrowed down with reference to specific disciplines and discourses. For the study of literary , Wolf recommends focussing on the literature-specific framings which “refer to, and guide the interpretation of (parts of), such works as artefacts” (“Introduction” 13, emphasis in the original), namely, the frame artefact, generic frames, and the frame fictionality (14). Literary framings come in different forms (sender-based, message-based, context-based, and recipient-based) which can be typologically ordered depending on more or less complex criteria of distinction (extension, medium, authorisation, saliency, location in the actual message/text, and location in the process of reception) as shown in fig. 5 below.

13 Gale MacLaclan and Ian Reid provide a thorough critical review of the main contributions to the scholarly debates on frame theory in their succinct and still relevant Framing and Interpretation (Melbourne: Melbourne UP, 1994).

13 Criteria of Forms of Framings differentiation Agency14 Sender- Message-based Context- Recipient- based based based Extension total vs. partial Medium homomedial vs. heteromedial Authorisation authorised (intracompositional) vs. non- authorised (extracompositional) Saliency overt/explicit vs. covert/implicit Location in the paratextual vs. intratextual actual message/text Location in the [only for textual framings process of of temporal media] initial, reception internal, or terminal Fig. 5. Wolf’s Typology of Framings

In the following frame-analytical section, I propose to analyse the types and functions of framings set by the miniature on f.90v. Wolf’s model lends itself easily to the analysis of framings in SGGK. Following his lead, I focus on text-based framings only. Indeed, contextual framings of the poem are lost—if they have ever existed. Also, access to the original sender-based or recipient- based framings (which can be tentatively and partially reconstructed from framing markers in the text), can, at best, be a matter of mere guessing. As noted above, the original text of SGGK is bound with three other plurimedial texts, namely, Pearl, Cleanness, and Patience. It would scarcely be judicious not to take into consideration the fact that the three poems, which belong to different (elegy, exemplum, and homily),15 precede SGGK. I propose to consider these texts, together with their framing apparatuses, as providing a secondary text-based form of framing. The extant plurimedial text is a reliable corpus of analysis offering a typology of framings which may be represented as follows:

14 While four types of agency are listed here, only the message- and context-based ones are analysed in some detail. The study of the sender- and recipient-based agency types are outside the immediate frame of this work. 15 This statement about Pearl, Cleanness, and Patience is not meant to reduce the complexity and versatility of their generic affiliations. I recognise that there is no critical consensus around the genre (s) of each poem.

14 Criteria of differentiation Forms of framing Framing agency (Primary) Text-based (Secondary) Text-based Extension of framing Total Episodic Medium of framing Heteromedial Authorisation of framing Intracompositional Saliency of framing Direct Location of framing in the actual text Paratextual Location in the process of reception Initial Variable Fig. 6: Primary and Secondary Framings of the Initial Miniature in the SGGK MS

2.2. Framing the Green Border

When considered through the criteria of classification mentioned above, the diversity and versatility of forms of framings may overstretch the researcher’s efforts and deny research a sharp edge which can carve a solid argument, Wolf therefore proposes to privilege textual, total, overt, and initial framings. He argues that

it is at the beginning of an intended reception process that important frames of reference are traditionally signalled and expectations are created, and when frames are signalled, this is usually done in a salient way and refers to the entire work under consideration. (Wolf, “Introduction” 21)

This type of initial textual framings explicitly keys cognitive frames extending over the total span of the narrative, hence its apt designation as a framing border (22). Its importance derives from its singular status as an overt signal spatially preceding the other framings, and, at the same time, sharing with them their textual status. Another advantage of singling out this specific form of framing is that it “could be carried out with reference to all media” (21), whether they be oral, verbal, or graphic. This is particularly relevant to SGGK because its first miniature corresponds in all respects to Wolf’s conception of the framing border as text- based, initial, overt, and total (fig. 7). The miniature on f.90v is credibly a

15 “visual preface” to the poem (Hilmo 2).16 Indeed, it begins the plurimedial text- based narrating of the romance and triggers the reception process.17 This overt graphic, gory representation of the first round of the beheading game is a defamiliarised initial iconic peritext which leads to the subsequent telling of the beheading game in Arthur’s court, Gawain’s journey to the Green Chapel, and his adventures on the way and in Bertilak’s castle until his return to Camelot. The framing border also clearly evokes the chivalric and supernatural frames which guide interpretation throughout the romance, but while the martial frame modulates into the courtly frame, the supernatural wanes into the background until the offer of the girdle and its use by Gawain. The graphic depiction of royal characters (as evinced by their crowns; the king wears a blue robe, and this is part of Arthur’s armorial colours) can be seen as a metaconcept because it is likely to trigger generic expectations. For informed readers, these can even be context-driven towards British history and . As a framing border of SGGK, the initial peritext is also functionally related to the other verbal and iconic elements. Before stepping onto the functions of the framing border of the poem, it is worth quoting Wolf’s apt extended metaphor: “[i]f the abstract frames can be described as tools of interpretation, their codings in framings are the (visible or imagined) labels on the tool-box that induce the recipient to choose the correct tools” (“Introduction” 26). I do not discuss the possible augmentations of these functions through their combination with self-referential and meta-referential functions because the latter are used in postmodern, not medieval literature. If there were an original title which mentioned Gawain and the Green Knight, then the miniature on f.90v would have been self-referential.18 I focus on text- centred functions due to their direct relevance. The other functions suggested by Wolf (29-31) would not apply to the framing border of the poem. Indeed, the self-reflexive, self-centred function keying artifice is absent from the initial miniature. Because there are no extant biographical or bibliographical references, there is no explicit interface between context and text, hence the irrelevance of the context-centred function. The disregard of the sender-centred function creating a sender profile is justified by the anonymity of the iconic

16 It is beyond the scope of this paper to consider the other miniatures in the manuscript, but I subscribe to Hilmo’s argument that a “tapestry of 12 miniatures frames [the poems] in serial fashion by way of visual prefaces and epilogue” (1). 17 For the readers of a facsimile of Cotton Nero A.x. (art. 3) who reach the poem after reading the preceding three narratives, the framing border of SGGK recalibrates generic and thematic expectations distilled from secondary (para) texts, and generates new ones. 18 Even in the absence of such a title, an informed reader well versed in Arthurian lore and perhaps with some access to the poem’s antecedents would have guessed.

16 Initial

Textual Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Overt

Total

Interface with MS Framing border Frames Verbal narrative Retroframings

Fig. 7. The Framing Border of SGGK in the Manuscript and the Hypertextual Edition

17 peritext and the complexity of the enunciating instance. Since the characters painted in the framing border are absorbed into their world, they do not appeal to the recipient; they covertly affirm the authenticity of their unfurling narrative by being immersed in it. Demarcating SGGK from Patience, the graphic framing border signals the beginning of a new narrative and keys the expectation that the poem is a unified and meaningful artwork. It also intimates its fictionality, thereby creating “aesthetic distance and ensuring the reception of [the] work as art” (Wolf, “Introduction” 27 n.49). The representation of the Green Knight on his green horse while holding his severed head high is susceptible of being subjected to a ‘suspension of disbelief’ by the modern reader/viewer on account of its obvious fictionality. The border also signals the aesthetic value of the work as fictional artwork belonging to a specific literary tradition.19 Activating this framing mechanism triggers expectations that the poem belongs to the narrative genre of courtly adventure and romance, a class-specific form of entertainment and instruction of the privileged. It is clearly a covert exclusion marker of class affiliation, but this is another story. Perhaps the most important frame activated by the framing border is narrativity. The defamiliarised scene inaugurating the poem comes and creates the expectations that the beheading has (causes and) consequences, and that there must be an explanation for the surreal scene of the Green Knight surviving Gawain’s lethal blow. If the initial framings of a narrative, as Wolf argues, “elicit narrative readings” (“Framings” 126-27), then reframing or unframing the narrative is likely not to activate the same frames and keep the same reading.

2.2. Framing Gawain Differently: Presenting Gawain Differently

For medieval readers of the manuscript, activating the narrative frames chivalric adventure and magic must have been thrilling and exciting. The same frames in our disenchanted world are probably experienced with amusement, disbelief, and scorn. While the fragile manuscript is practically inaccessible, the digital edition has the merit of providing the interested public with a faithful reproduction of the parchment folios of the poem and its paratextual apparatus. The cognitive frames activated by the text and its digital version are

19 Following Wolf, this initial graphic device can be considered as a mise en cadre, meaning an “illustration of elements of the framed artefact in the framing” (“Introduction” 28). Informed viewers/readers who have familiarity with colour and the beheading motif in Celtic literature and myth are likely to have all the relevant frames activated before even beginning to read the poem.

18 practically the same; the main difference concerns the user-friendly digital interface which provides notes and annotations further evoking the frame of narrativity.20 The border of Tolkien and Gordon’s edition is reframed by another miniature from the SGGK. At first glance, this does not seem to have particular consequences on the reception of the poem and may be easily condoned, but scrutiny of the frames activated by the replacement suggests otherwise. The depiction of the richly attired lady tickling the chin of the naked Gawain sleeping in a cosy bed evokes love and sex, themes which are as far removed from the poem as the Green Chapel is from Camelot. Only a faint shade of the world of chivalric adventure survives on the cover page of Borroff’s translation, which abandons the peritextual apparatus of the original manuscript altogether and borrows its framing border from the Old French Très Riches Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry. The reframed border vaguely evokes courtliness in the modified, background depiction of a castle, but the frames of chivalry and magic are gone. The viewer who has no prior familiarity with the story is deprived of helpful mental keys, the title excepting. It should be noted that this elision of the original miniature is far from being an isolated case. Indeed, many print editions and translations feature unauthorised iconic peritexts, and, of course, verbal ones (introductions, notes, prefaces, etc.). Unauthorised, also, is the reshuffling of the order of placement of framing iconic peritexts, which also leads to a coding of different cognitive frames. Editorial tempering with the original framing border thus has consequences that go beyond what the limits of editorial license would permit. I have so far focussed on the first miniature in the manuscript of SGGK as a framing border and on its renditions in two editions and a translation, but I would like to make one last observation on its relationship with the three terminal miniatures. The motto of the Order of the Garter is the final verbal part of the poem, and yet, the last folio is followed by three full-page miniatures. These post-liminal iconic peritexts depict, in this order, the seduction scene in Bertilak’s castle, Gawain’s arrival at the Green Chapel, and his return to Camelot. Their terminal location is intriguing because, even by medieval standards, it is rather rare to come across similar occurrences. If the three miniatures were part of the original plans for the manuscript, as mentioned on p. 5 above, then it would not tax the imagination too much to construe them as retroframings, as analeptic references to the framing border which summarise key events in the narrative and graphically evoke the key

20 A secondary difference concerns the medium of the hypertextual edition. Digital and immaterial, it is fluid and non-permanent. The hypertext is made up of bits, the configuration of which can be altered or closed by the user/viewer.

19 Manuscript Tolkien and Gordon’s Edition Borroff’s Translation Hypertextual Edition Medium Parchment Paper Paper Digital Text-based Total Partial (homodiegetic) Partial (heterodiegetic) Total Framing Type Intracompositional Extracompositional Intracompositional Border Overt Initial (in the section) Removed Removed Initial (in the section) Function Text-centred frame activation Artwork Artwork Fictional Fictional Fictionality blurred Fictional Frames Value Violent and supernatural Romantic/Sexual Artistic Violent and supernatural Genre chivalric Courtly Historical? Fairy-tale? Chivalric Narrative Keyed Blurred Keyed Fig. 8. Frame Activation in the Manuscript and Three Modern Renditions

20 frames which have already been invoked in the poem and its border. A proper analysis of these miniatures may pave the way for energising future frame- theoretical research.

Conclusion

Modern editors have taken many liberties with Sir Gawain—too many, perhaps, to stay within the borders of ethical considerations towards documents from the past. Many have touched the language, transcription, and layout of the poem, and many others have inflated the verbal paratextual apparatus with all sorts of liminal materials, like introductions, notes, and glossaries. More subtle touches, likely to go unnoticed by the reader, concern the management of the iconic peritexts of the manuscript. The initial miniature in SGGK has generally been seen as a rough and gory depiction of a beheading scene. Its inclusion in modern renditions of the poem has therefore depended on the decisions and manipulations of its many editors, translators, and printers. While it was diplomatically displaced by another miniature from the manuscript in Tolkien and Gordon’s edition, the initial iconic peritext was replaced by an illumination from an Old French codex book in Borroff’s translation. Luckily, the digital facsimile of the text reproduces the manuscript and thus preserves the original order in which the miniatures of Cotton Nero A.x. (art. 3) actually come. While the editorial displacement or replacement of the initial iconic peritext of SGGK could be excused on ethical, aesthetic, political, or economic grounds, the miniature on folio 90v deserves a better fate, not just out of pity for a decapitated medieval text. This fading miniature was credibly an integral part of the production scheme of the manuscript and therefore has an important function in the narrative of SGGK as a framing border. Studying the editorial treatment of the miniature on f.90v from the perspective of Genette’s theory of paratextuality is a good threshold into the text, assisting its reception and interpretation. Indeed, it provides a thorough description of the actual statuses of the miniature in different renditions of SGGK in different media and thus allows for a meticulous study of this peritextual element on the basis of the Structuralist model of communication. Still, it does not adequately account for the interactions between concrete (paratextual) framings and abstract frames, the mental structures which process and guide the interpretation of the narrative. Cognitive narratology has made it possible to see through this grey area lucidly; indeed, recent research has rehabilitated the liminal elements of a narrative back into critical interest after evidencing the role of the mind in mediating between the text and the world. On this basis, I studied the cognitive implications of the editorial unframing

21 and reframing SGGK by homodiegetic or heterodiegetic framings. I argued that any change affecting the location of the framing border of the poem, and any decision (not) to include it in an edition or translation effectively triangulates the mind-narrative nexus differently and therefore delays the deployment of key mental structures. This is likely to affect the reception of the text, but what matters so often for modern publishers is what affects the sales of the text.

List of Works Cited

Primary Sources

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Trans. Marie Borroff. New York: Norton, 1967. Print. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Ed. J.R.R. Tolkien and E.V. Gordon. London: Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1952. Print. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. “British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x. (art 3).” University of Calgary, Libraries and Cultural Resources, http://gawain.ucalgary.ca. Accessed 1 February 2016.

Secondary Sources

Genette, Gérard. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Cambridge: CUP, 1997. Print. Trans. of Seuils. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1987. Goffman, Erving. Frame Analysis: An Essay into the Organization of Experience. 1974. Boston: Northwestern UP, 1986. Print. Gollancz, Israel, ed. Pearl, Cleanness, Patience and Sir Gawain: A Facsimile of British Museum MS Cotton Nero A.x. London: OUP, 1923. EETS OS 162. Archive.org. Web. 21 March 2016. Hilmo, Maidie. “Illustrating the Gawain Manuscript: A Visual Journey Through MS Cotton Nero A.x. (art. 3).” Google Drive PDF File. Web. 1 June 2016. Kelemen, Erick. Textual Editing and Criticism: An Introduction. New York: Norton, 2008. Print. McGillivray, Murray. “Digitizing Sir Gawain: Traditional Editorial Scholarship and the Electronic Medium in the Cotton Nero A.x. Project.” Mind Technologies: Humanities, Computing, and the Canadian Academic

22 Community. Ed. Raymond Siemens and David Moorman. Calgary: U of Calgary P, 2006. Print. “Miniature.” Glossaries. British Library Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts, www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/GlossM.asp. Accessed 1 June 2016. Olsen, Kenna L. Introduction. Cleanness: A Diplomatic Edition with Textual, Codicologial, and Paleographical Notes. Publications of the Cotton Nero A.x. Project 1. Calgary: Cotton Nero A.x. Project, 2011. PDF file. ---. “Realising (Re)Vision, Manipulating Manoeuvres, Editing the English Middle Ages.” ReVision: Editing Across Disciplines. Ed. Victoria Anker and Laura Chapot. Spec. issue of Forum 3 (2014): n. pag. Web. 20 March 2017. Treharne, Elaine. “The Context of Medieval Literature.” Readings in Medieval Literature: Interpreting Old and Middle English Literature. Ed. David Johnson and Elaine Treharne. Oxford: OUP, 2005. Print. “Underdrawing.” Glossaries. British Library Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts, www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/GlossU.asp. Accessed 1 June 2016. Wolf, Werner. Introduction. Framing Borders in Literature and Other Media. Ed. Werner Wolf and Walter Bernhart. Amesterdam: Rodopi, 2006. 1-40. Print. ---. “Framings of Narrative in Literature and the Pictorial Arts.” Storyworlds across Media: Toward a Media- Conscious Narratology. Ed. Marie-Laure Ryan and Jan-Noël Thon. Lincoln and London: U of Nebraska P, 2014. 126-47. Print.

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